CMCC-FISR – Euro-Mediterranean centre for Climate Change, Special Integrative Fund for Research
The Euro-Mediterranean Centre for Climate Change is a national research centre devoted to the study of climate change and its impacts, focussing on the Mediterranean region. The Centre main headquarters are located in Lecce and six other satellite offices are distributed in the rest of Italy. The research institutes that participate in the creation of the Centre are: INGV (National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology, project leader), ASI (Italian Space Agency), CVR (Venice Research Consortium), FEEM (Enrico Mattei ENI Foundation), the Universities of Lecce and Benevento, CIRA (Italian Centre for Space Research).Within this project a new supercomputing centre dedicated to the development and testing of global and regional climate models has been created. Future climate scenarios will be tested at the global and regional scale, followed by the development and application of risk assessment, impact assessment and decision support system (DSS) methodologies.
What the Centre produced up to now:
- a global circulation model (0.5 x 0.5 degrees resolution) based on the coupling of the atmospheric ECHAM and oceanic OPA-ORCA models, to simulate future climate scenarios and study climate temporal variability. Sea ice, terrestrial and marine ecosystems will be integrated in the model;
- a high resolution model for the Mediterranean sea (1/16 degrees resolution);
- models to simulate the socio-economic impacts of climate change.
The modelling outputs were used to assess the climate change impacts on the economy, agriculture, on the marine and terrestrial ecosystems, on coastal areas and on human health. The Centre promoted international cooperation of its partners, that were already involved in several European research projects. The activities of the Centre were organised among the partners in nine work packages:
WP 1: Grid technologies and applications
WP 2: Numerical applications
WP 3: Socio-economic models
WP 4: Impacts on agriculture
WP 5: Risk assessment, impact assessment and DSS methodologies
WP 6: Special projects
WP 7: Training, dissemination, education
WP 8: Operations
WP 9: Administration and organization of the Centre
Work Package 5 (Venice, Italy)
ENVIROMENTAL RISK ASSESSMENT, IMPACT ASSESSMENT AND DSS METHODOLOGIES
This activity, based in Venice, is coordinated by CVR (Venice Research Consortium) whose partners for this project are CNR (National Research Council), CPSM (Tidal Forecast and Information Centre of the Venice City Council) and the University of Venice.
The main activities of the WP are here summarized:
- development of a GIS (Geographic Information System) based integrated risk assessment methodology and of an environmental impact assessment for the higher Adriatic coast;
- prioritization of the risks posed by climate change, thus supporting the identification of the most suitable mitigation and monitoring interventions;
- development of a suitable Decision Support System (DSS) framework. The DSS will support the definition of the possible interventions for impact control and mitigation at the regional scale;
- study of time series of several relevant environmental indicators for climate change. A study on the correlation between solar activity and climate will be also performed;
- investigation on the possible effects of climate change on the behaviour and distribution of persistent organic pollutants (POPs);
- development of high resolution sea circulation models, focusing on the key impacts on the coastal areas (e.g. bottom stress, coastal erosion, impacts on fishing and other human activities).
All these activities will be conducted with an extensive use of remote sensing data and the support of GIS tools. Particular attention will be given to the city of Venice, for its peculiar position and its extremely high vulnerability to a possible sea level rise.
Link: http://www.cmcc.it/